Morality in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction: Souls at Hazard

320 Pages·2017·10.39 MB·English

by  Russell M. Hillier (auth.)

’
Morality in Cormac McCarthy s Fiction
ThisfinestudyofourgreatestlivingpoetinprosearguesforMcCarthy’s“impassionedand
consistentmoralvision,”andthatMcCarthy“remainsasintriguedbythemysteryofgoodness
asheisbythemysteryofevil.”AsappliedtoMcCarthy’sSouthwestnovels,includingBlood
Meridian,theBorderTrilogy,NoCountryforOldMen,andwithachapteronMcCarthy’s
PulitzerPrize-winningTheRoad,Hillier’sapproachtowhathecalls“McCarthy’sexamina-
tion of goodness striving to prevail in a dark world and wide” is presented with a rare
combinationofintellectualclarityandforce.Thisisabookthatisboundtobeenjoyedand
tostimulatelivelydiscussionamongstMcCarthyenthusiastsbothprofessionalandprivate.
PeterJosyph,authorofAdventuresinReadingCormacMcCarthy,andCormacMcCarthy’s
House:ReadingMcCarthyWithoutWalls
Itisentirely appropriate thatRenaissanceman (andscholar)RussellHillier hereturnshis
attentiontowhathecallsCormacMcCarthy’s“Renaissancemind.”Hillierjoinswriterssuch
as Edwin Arnold, Dianne Luce, and more recently Lydia Cooper and Matthew Potts in
focusing on the moral engagement of McCarthy’s works, and he is often surprising and
always illuminating in drawing out McCarthy’s debts to Dante and Donne, Ovid and
Marlowe—allusions that have not been as commented upon as those to the likes of
FaulknerandHemingway,forinstance.Thisclearandincisivestudywillbeatouchstone.
StaceyPeebles,editorofTheCormacMcCarthyJournal,USA
Few arguments about Cormac McCarthy’s novels, plays, and screenplays have seemed as
insoluble as whether his work features any definable moral compass. In this meticulously
researched and elegantly written volume, Russell Hillier has rendered disputatious
CormackiansaboonbypouringmorefuelonthefirekindledbycriticslikeDianneLuce,
LydiaCooper,ManuelBroncano,andPetraMundik.Hilliernotonlyarguesconvincinglyfor
anethicalandevenheroicvitalitytothemaster’sworks,butstakesoutnewandimportant
territory by demonstrating McCarthy’s indebtednessto neglected sourceslike Milton and
Shakespeare.ThisisasignificantadditiontoourexegeticalliteratureaboutMcCarthy.
RichardWallach,SocietyOfficerforTheCormacMcCarthySociety,USA
InthenowfervidworldofCormackiancriticism,RussellM.Hillier’sstyleandvoicestand
outfortheirdeftnessandelegance.Hisprobingandinsightfulintertextualitybringstobear
theinfluenceofJob,Ovid,andDostoevsky,amongmanyothers.HisvindicationofJohn
GradyColeasstoicandtragicheroisasupliftingasitisneeded,andhiscriticalconsideration
ofTheCounselorwillbecomeaprimaryresource.
AllenJosephs,ProfessorofEnglish,UniversityofWestFlorida,USA
InMoralityinCormacMcCarthy’sFiction,RussellHillierapplieshisconsiderableknowledge
of the Western literary tradition to expand in an extraordinary way our understanding of
Cormac McCarthy’s rich ethical vision. The book is elegant, insightful, and manifestly
original.Whilerootedinthescholarship,Hillierbringsliteraryandphilosophicalcontexts
tobearthathavelargelybeenuntouchedbyothers.Thisisaworkthatwillemergeascentral
toMcCarthystudiesforyearstocome.
StevenFrye,PresidentoftheCormacMcCarthySociety,USA
RussellM.Hillier
Morality in Cormac
’
McCarthy s Fiction
Souls at Hazard
RussellM.Hillier
ProvidenceCollege
Providence,RhodeIsland,USA
ISBN978-3-319-46956-0 ISBN978-3-319-46957-7(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-46957-7
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For Serafina
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
A portionofthismaterialhas previouslyappearedelsewhere. ChapterFive
was originally published in a slightly different form as Russell M. Hillier,
“‘Like some supplicant to the darkness over them all’: The Good of John
Grady Cole in Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain,” The Cormac
McCarthy Journal 14.1 (2016): 3–36. Copyright © 2016 The
Pennsylvania State University Press. Stacey Peebles is the editor of The
Cormac McCarthy Journal. This article is used by permission of The
PennsylvaniaStateUniversity Press. The granting ofpermission touse the
foregoingmaterialaspartofthepresentstudyisgratefullyacknowledged.
WhentheprojectwasexperiencingitsgrowingpainsIalsopresentedorts
andfragmentsofthisbookatTheCormacMcCarthySocietyConferenceat
Berea College, Kentucky, in March 2013; The American Literature
Association’s 25th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., in May
2014; The American Literature Association’s 26th Annual Conferencein
Boston, Massachusetts, in May 2015; and The American Literature
Association Symposium: Frontiers and Borders in American Literature in
SanAntonio,Texas,inFebruary2016.
IfirstofallwishtothankBenDoyle,thestalwartPublisherforLiterature
at Palgrave Macmillan, and a fellow admirer of McCarthy, for first seeing
themeritoftheproject,forhissplendidvisionofwhatthehumanitiesisand
should be, and for the energy and cheer with which he shepherded me
along at each step of the way. I should also express my gratitude to Eva
Hodgkin and Camille Davies, the Editorial Assistants for Literature at
PalgraveMacmillan,foralltheirhelpandunderstandingatvarious,slightly
frantic stages of editing. I am no less thankful to Swathy Deepak, project
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
manager at Springer Nature, and her team. I am indebted to the anon-
ymousreviewersoftheoriginalmanuscriptforthecareanddiligencewith
whichtheyevaluatedandrespondedtomywork;notleast,Ithankthemfor
theirrecognitionofandappreciationforMcCarthy’sdeepmoralvision.
I am grateful for the warmth, generosity, and good humor of those
McCarthy scholars who welcomed into the fold this relative outsider to the
fieldandencouragedhisideas.ImentionespeciallyRickWallach,whotook
everycaretomakemefeelathomeinTheCormacMcCarthySociety;Steven
Frye,whoonapostprandialwalkthroughWashington,D.C.,firstsuggested
to me the merit of developing a project dedicated to McCarthy’s use of
intertextuality;andStaceyPeebles,forherboundlessenthusiasmanddedica-
tionand,notleast,forsharingwithmeherimpeccabletasteinTexascountry
andfolkmusic.IwouldalsoliketothankthoseMcCarthyscholarswhohave
helpedtokeeptheflameofinspirationalightingenialconversationconducted
quitesolemnlyinside,andmoremerrilyoutside,theconferenceroom,among
them,PeterJosyph,AllenJosephs,DianneLuce,GeneYoung,PhilSnyder,
LydiaCooper,BenjaminWest,KevinTrumpeter,andWallisR.Sanborn,III.
ProvidenceCollege’sgrantingofsabbaticalleavemadeitpossibleformeto
workonthisstudy.IamgratefultoProvidenceCollegeforrelievingmeofmy
ordinary college teaching and service responsibilities and for giving me the
opportunitytodedicatemytimetoresearchingthisprojectduringthisperiod
ofleave.Ishouldalsoacknowledgethoseformerundergraduatestudentsof
minewhoseworkIsupervisedonandoffoverthepasthalf-decadeforsenior
thesesoroncoursesofindependentstudyonMcCarthy.Theirenthusiasmfor
McCarthy’swritingswasinvigorating.IamthinkingofMatthewHannigan,
ThomasR.Cody,BrendanQuigley,andAnneMarieMcLean.
My scholarshipisonlyever possible because ofthe love, understanding,
andsupportofmyfamily.Mybeautifulandlong-sufferingspouseAlyssahas
once again been the pattern of all patience as I researched, composed,
revised,andeditedmysecondbook.Hergoodness,faith,andinnerstrength
remain an example to me. My mother and father, who instilled in me an
admiration for learning and the wisdom that comes from it, continue to
remindmeofthelightattheendofthetunnelandhelpmetofindthegood
in all things. Our six-year-old daughter Serafina may one day solve the
enigma of why her father can find words and books as fascinating and
wonder-workingaspicturesandtoys.Serafinamademefeelmoreneglectful
than she can know in her willingness to keep me company while I was
composingandrevisingthemanuscript.Forthematchlessjoyshehasalready
giventous,Idedicatethisworktoher.
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
Notes 13
2 “Givethe DevilHis Due”: JudgeHolden’sDesign
inBloodMeridian 15
Notes 49
3 “Antic Clay”?: The CompetingEthicalAppeals ofBlood
Meridian 53
Notes 90
4 “AKnowing Deep inthe Bone”: CowboyStoicism and
Tragic Heroism inAll thePretty Horses 95
4.1 John Grady’s Constancy andthe Ideaof Fellowship 96
4.2 John Gradyin Paradise 103
4.3 John Gradyin Adversity 108
4.4 John GradyAfterAll 114
Notes 124
5 “Like SomeSupplicant tothe Darkness OverThemAll”:
TheGood of JohnGrady Colein Cities of thePlain 127
Notes 158
ix
x CONTENTS
6 “Nothingis CruelerThana Coward”: No Country forOld
MenandThe Counseloras Tragic Fables
ofthe ContemporarySouthwest 161
6.1 Squandered Worldsin NoCountryfor Old Men 164
6.2 Riding the Hellbound Train inThe Counselor 231
6.3 Conclusion 245
Notes 248
7 Coda—The Goodof Story inThe Road 263
Notes 276
Bibliography 279
Index 295
CHAPTER1
Introduction
[N]ot again in all the world’s turning will there be terrains so wild and
barbaroustotrywhetherthestuffofcreationmaybeshapedtoman’swillor
whetherhisownheartisnotanotherkindofclay.
McCarthyBloodMeridian5
Hands from which all those blessings had flowed. Hands I never tired to
lookat.ShapedintheimageofGod.Tomaketheworld.Tomakeitagain
andagain.Tomakeitintheverymaelstromofitsundoing.
McCarthyTheStonemason132–33
This is a time of foison in McCarthy studies. In just over three decades,
critical interchange on the nature of his works has come a long way from
Vereen Bell’s assertion of a prevailing nihilism in McCarthy’s fiction and
worldview. In Bell’s 1983 landmark essay “The Ambiguous Nihilism of
Cormac McCarthy,” Bell judged that “Cormac McCarthy’s novels are as
innocent of theme and of ethical reference as they are of plot” (31). Five
yearslater,inhisbook-lengthstudyTheAchievementofCormacMcCarthy
(1988), Bell somewhat qualified his former adamancy, but still proposed
that McCarthy’s novels had an “antimetaphysical bias” built into them
(2),whichrestedon“nofirstprinciples,nofoundationaltruth”(9).Since
Bell’s pioneering critical endeavor to grapple with the meaning of
McCarthy’s early novels, modifying and opposing scholarly voices have
benefitted from increased knowledge and opportunity to understand the
author’s purpose. First, the corpus of McCarthy’s works has grown,
©TheAuthor(s)2017 1
R.M.Hillier,MoralityinCormacMcCarthy’sFiction,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-46957-7_1